Review: Engaging cast carries Bad Moon’s story

In Bad Moon, Todd Ritter returns to the Pennsylvania hamlet of Perry Hollow whose chief of police, 40-something Kat Campbell, an appealing single mom raising a Down syndrome son, keeps a careful eye on her town, still reeling from the serial killer who stalked its streets in Ritter’s debut book.

Those events led to the firing of state police investigator Nick Donnelly, who has since started a nonprofit dedicated to solving cold cases.

At the behest of famous writer Eric Olmstead, Nick is now looking into the unsolved disappearance of Eric’s brother, Charlie.

Eric himself was an infant when 9-year-old Charlie presumably swept to his death over Sunset Falls near their house in Perry Hollow on the same night Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

Kat’s father was the police chief who investigated the case; Eric and Kat later had a brief high school romance. These personal connections add an emotional charge to a case that already shows some troubling inconsistencies.

That many of the residents in the tiny neighborhood cul-de-sac where the Olmsteads lived are still around 40-some years since enriches the novel’s possibilities.

As does the discovery that other area boys of similar age have disappeared over the years coincident with other landings on the moon.

Ritter weaves the multiple strands of his plot with its late ’60s touchstones — the romance of the early space program, Vietnam, and the burgeoning sexual revolution — into a compelling mystery.

And it is a testament to his engaging characters and well-handled pacing that the book’s didn’t-see-that-coming revelations seem firmly earned.